(Port-au-Prince, July 14, 2014)— On July 14-15, 2014, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is visiting Haiti for the first time since the UN introduced a deadly cholera epidemic to the Caribbean nation in 2010. The UN reports that the Secretary-General will meet with victims of the UN-caused disaster, and announce the launch of a sanitation campaign that “aims to scale up sanitation and hygiene interventions in rural areas.”

“For four years now, the UN has been launching new initiatives and making statements of sympathy, without taking any real action. Over 8,000 people have died and cholera keeps killing, and the UN still won’t even issue an apology, let alone provide funding to eliminate cholera in Haiti” said Mario Joseph, Managing Attorney of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), which has been working with cholera victims to seek justice since 2010.

Under increasing fire from UN insiders, members of the U.S. Congress and legal experts to respond seriously to the crisis, Ban told the Miami Herald last week that “the international community, including the United Nations, has a moral responsibility to help the Haitian people stem the further spread of this cholera epidemic.”

But the organization has not accepted responsibility for having caused the epidemic in the first place. Nor has it provided compensation to cholera survivors, as it is required to do by its own international agreements.

Over two and half years ago, Ban launched an initiative to eliminate cholera in Haiti, but to date the UN has furnished only 1% of the total funding needed, and gathered another 9% in recycled earthquake pledges. As a result, the plan remains critically underfunded and the effort has yet to get off the ground.

The UN also announced the establishment of a joint committee to address cholera in October 2013, but the committee only met for the first time in May 2014, and has yet to release information publicly about its mandate or operations.

“It is an insult to all Haitians for the Secretary-General to come to Haiti for a photo-op when he refuses to take responsibility for the thousands of Haitians killed and the hundreds of thousands sickened by the UN cholera epidemic,” Attorney Joseph added.

Cholera continues to afflict Haiti’s vulnerable population. The UN itself has warned that the disease may kill up to 2,000 more people in 2014.

“The Secretary-General lectures others on the importance of accountability and the rule of law, but refuses to comply with long-established and clear legal obligations to compensate Haitians harmed by its reckless introduction of cholera into Haiti,” said Brian Concannon, Jr., Esq., who directs the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), a Boston-based non-profit that represents plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against the UN. “The double standard is outrageous, and deeply undermines the UN’s credibility throughout the world.”

Three lawsuits are currently pending against the organization and the Secretary-General for their reckless oversight and management that caused the cholera outbreak.

For more information, including case documents and background materials, see www.IJDH.org.